time to read

I love having time to read again... in the past few days, I read two books:
A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier by Ishmael Beah and Helpless by Barbara Gowdy. Both were disturbing in their own way and yet both taught me some important things.

A Long Way Gone is primarily disturbing due to the fact that it's a true account of a young boy's experience as a child soldier in Sierra Leone. The things he does are truly horrifying and the way he describes them is both mesmerizing and apalling. Several times I had to skim passages because they were too graphic. Yet I am glad I read it, not only because it's been sitting on my shelf for well over a year, but also because it opened my eyes to the reality of civil war in many parts of the world. I often feel so sheltered from so much of what goes on in the world. No matter how hard I try, there is no way I can even begin to imagine this reality: "...soon enough, people began going about their daily business of searching for food, even though stray bullets were likely to kill them" (p.207). We are so incredibly blessed in North America, yet so stubbornly blind to the peace and freedom we have. (Which, on a side note, is part of what frustrates me so much about people complaining about us having troops in Afghanistan. If Canada were the war-torn, Taliban-controlled country, wouldn't we want and need any outside help we could get? But I'm getting distracted...) While there is much to take away from this memoir, the thing that stood out to me was Beal's question, asked several times throughout the book, of why he was the one in his family to survive. I think this memoir answers that question very poignantly.

Helpless is a fictional novel, written from several points of view, about the abduction of Rachel, an exceptionally beautiful nine-year-old girl, by a struggling pedophile. Ron, the abductor, believes himself to be in love with Rachel, and also believes she is being abused. When he snatches Rachel, he believes he is rescuing her. Throughout the novel, Ron struggles with his desire for Rachel and his determination to provide a better life for her. As I said, there is much disturbing content in this novel, but ultimately it is a novel that forces the reader to reconsider preconceived notions about many different types of people. I highly recommend it.

I've now moved on to reading Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth by Margaret Atwood. So far it is fascinating. More to come on this series of essay/lectures.